Marco Rubio's Latest Anti-China Gag: A National Ban on TikTok - Vanity Fair

A trio of bipartisan lawmakers person teamed up connected authorities targeting TikTok, the Chinese-owned societal media app whose almighty algorithm has raised concerns astir information information and privacy. Senator Marco Rubio, the apical Republican connected the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a measure Tuesday that would “block and prohibit each transactions” by TikTok and immoderate different societal media platforms operating “under the influence” of China, Russia, Iran, oregon North Korea. Likewise, a brace of bipartisan congressmen, GOP Representative Mike Gallagher and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, person sponsored a companion measure successful the House, Reuters reports. 

Rubio and Gallagher first announced the authorities successful a Washington Post Opinion portion past month, criticizing President Joe Biden’s use of the platform to scope voters. In a press release Tuesday, Gallagher painted TikTok arsenic “digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news,” portion Rubio claimed “the national authorities has yet to instrumentality a azygous meaningful enactment to support American users from the menace of TikTok.” The US authorities and TikTok person been moving to scope a information statement for years—President Donald Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to prohibition TikTok from operating successful the US unless it was enactment nether American ownership—an bid that Biden later rescinded portion vowing to code imaginable information risks from TikTok and different foreign-owned apps.

Now, the bipartisan trio of lawmakers is looking to enact a nationalist prohibition connected TikTok as protracted talks between the US and TikTok proceed to deed snags. Administration officials are specifically acrophobic with TikTok’s “access to user information and its imaginable usage for power operations,” the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. FBI Director Christopher Wray said successful November that the bureau has “national-security concerns astir the app.” 

For its part, TikTok has claimed that it does not stock accusation with the Chinese government, CNN notes. And successful a connection to Reuters this week, a TikTok spokesperson called it “troubling that alternatively than encouraging the medication to reason its nationalist information reappraisal of TikTok, immoderate members of Congress person decided to propulsion for a politically-motivated prohibition that volition bash thing to beforehand the nationalist information of the United States.” Still, the institution acknowledged implicit the summertime that its non-US employees person entree to information connected US users, and said that it's moving to support that information. 

In immoderate case, Rubio and Gallagher's TikTok crusade is apt to gain some lawmakers brownie points among their constituents, arsenic CNN’s Oliver Darcy noted. "It's playing to the Fox News crowd," a idiosyncratic adjacent to TikTok told Darcy, who noted that that the authorities “reflects a caller trend" of Republicans showcasing "how hawkish they are connected China by taking a hardline stance connected TikTok with proposals…that bash small to really bounds its wide reach.” Governor Spencer Cox of Utah connected Tuesday became the latest GOP politician to contented an enforcement bid banning usage of the app connected state-owned physics devices, citing its ties to China. “China’s entree to information collected by TikTok presents a menace to our cybersecurity,” Cox said, vowing to “make definite that the radical of Utah tin spot the state’s information systems.” Meanwhile, South Dakota’s Kristi Noem and Maryland’s Larry Hogan have limited the use of TikTok connected authorities devices.